What Brand Blu ray player should I get?

I am thinking of finally buying a Blu ray player.
But I am not shore witch Brand to get.
All I No is that I want to be shore that
it has really good DVD Up scaling / up conversion. I have
Too many DVDs to buy all my movies again on Blu ray.
 And even with an unlimited money half of my collection is
 not likely to ever get put on Blu ray.

I am currently using a Toshiba XDE DVD player.
So I was thinking of getting a Toshiba Blu ray player
I also thought LG may be good as I have an LG LCD TV.
What do people like here?

In my opinion it really doesn't make much difference when it comes to brand, other than having the right features you are looking for. It's not like the analog days where you had to pay more money for a multi-head VCR with hi-fi sound and S-video output and get really good connectors, or what have you. The digital signal of a Blu-ray should theoretically be the same whether it is Sony or LG. I think the upscalers might be a bit different across brands but I've never heard of a DVD looking worse on a BD player than a DVD player so worst case it looks the same.

I've had experience with Sony, Toshiba and LG players. As far as I can tell they all work the same, but Sony is the most expensive, Toshiba is in the middle, and LG is the cheapest, simply because of brand name value. I'm sure if you got an LG player you would have no complaints. Check the reviews before you buy to make sure it is reliable though, some cheap models tend to skip or have long load times but LG is a pretty decent brand, especially for the price you pay.

Thanks for the info.

Bantha Poodoo ?

I too, am on the verge of changing over to blu ray.

I have looked at different brands and Sony does seem to be the most expensive.

I have seen some good looking Toshiba tv's that are 200htz picture refresh rate, and also a Toshiba multi region blu-ray[A,B,C] and dvd player[1,2,3,4,5,6]. I am looking at a 40+ size tv screen.

I think my main worry as well, is what my dvds are going to look like upscaled on a 40+ tv. What is the GOUT going to look like ??

I have the money to buy now, I just want to get what's right and not jump in too quick.

I haven't jumped on the Bluray bandwagon yet myself, but since my DVD player seems to be on the fritz, I may be doing so sometime soon-ish.

It's true that the picture quality of Bluray discs isn't going to vary hugely from player to player, because as long as they output the digital signal correctly, it'll be pretty much the same thing regardless.  What you see will depend more on the kind of display you're using than anything else.

However, you must not take this to mean that all players are created equal.  The quality of the de-interlacing and scaling can vary greatly, and many units will certainly cheap out on this aspect, giving subpar results.  For someone who still primarily wants to watch DVD's without having to buy everything over again, this becomes tremendously important.  De-interlacing in particular is critical, because accurately recovering the original frames without combing artefacts and other intrusive errors entering the image will have a major effect on what is seen.

In addition, there is the issue of compatibility to consider.  Though it may be less of an issue now, you should still be prepared to update the firmware of your Bluray player to accommodate the ever-changing copy protection schemes: failure to do so may result in some discs being unplayable, and this will also depend on whether the manufacturer keeps up with current releases in a timely fashion or not.  Some discs are notoriously slow to load, often due to overly-complicated menus and such, and players that have longer boot-up times to begin with will be particularly sluggish when playing these titles.

It is without doubt that Bluray is a more problematic and difficult format than DVD, being rather less user-friendly and requiring more effort to get things the way they should be.  The benefits of high definition make it worthwhile, but you must be prepared to deal with these kinds of issues.  Because of them, choosing the right player is a task worthy of giving thought to.

If you can afford it, I definitely recommend getting an Oppo player, because the company's support for their products is fantastic and you'll get top of the line performance for a fraction of the price from any other high end manufacturer.  Otherwise, the PS3 is widely respected for its Bluray capabilities and will give better results than many standalone players out there.

Thanks for all the info.

When I got my LG 32” LCD, I picked it because it had the zoom and stretch mode needed fore the GOUT. + it had the component and composite inputs needed for my old games.

I had thought of getting a PS3 although that is still not cheep.

Also I am a little worried about the way you slide the disk in like a car CD player, instead of the tray that comes out like a drawer.

Why did they have to do it like that?

Aesthetics. Unfortunately those motors will break at some point, and they will be very difficult and expensive to replace.

I got a Sony a couple of years ago for under a hundred and it is pretty damn good. I don't have it hooked up to the internet, but I know someone has the same player as me and theirs is, and it's got some cool capabilities. I don't really know what else to say except it's quick, and when I turn it on it turns on my TV too. I don't know how it does that.

Than maybe getting the PS3 as a Blu ray player is not a good idea?

And I should get a standalone Blu ray player and than in several years the PS3 will get cheep and game stop will have $5 PS3 game like they have $5 PS2 game now? And I will only need PS3 for games.

I don’t care if the games are not new to the world

Just so its new to me. :)

Right now at Gamestop you can get a used PS3 for about $120. The disc tray will probably conk out in ten or twelve years, but for an extra $40 compared to a stand alone player that's a pretty good fee to get access to the great PS3 library. For all anyone knows standalone BD players have the same lifespan.

If you have the original models from first release they even were PS2 compatible but these probably aren't what Gamestop sells used these days.

All my stuff does that.  It's a magic process called "using a universal remote." :p

I have a Sony BDP S-350 from about four years ago and its been almost perfect since i bought it, it has an excellent start up time with Blu Ray discs compared to most other players out there and does a pretty good job of upscalling regular DVD'S. It plays AVCHD discs no problem but it has a problem with the 24fps that Adywan used for his Star Wars AVCHD. Over the last few months it has started play discs out of sync from time to time for whatever reason. 

Ziz said:

I have a Sony BDP S-360 and the only problem I've had with it is that the latest firmware update is somehow incompatible with recent 20th Century Fox titles.  I couldn't play Avatar, Predators or The A Team.  Either there's a bug in their firmware they haven't fixed or Fox is so heavy handed with the copy protection that the player can't read through it.

Have you tried reverting back too an older firmware update?.

zombie84 said:

Right now you can get a used PS3 for about $120. The disc tray will probably conk out in ten or twelve years, but for an extra $40 compared to a stand alone player that's a pretty good fee to get access to the great PS3 library. For all anyone knows standalone BD players have the same lifespan.

If you have the original models from first release they even were PS2 compatible but these probably aren't what Gamestop sells used these days.

 i looked at Gamestop the Cheapest ps3 is $199.99